The question you will ask yourself after after putting in an SSD is "why didn't I do this sooner?"
The 750 will rpobably be incrementally faster than your existing. The SSD will be significantly faster. App open within 1-2 seconds. Cold start times are reduced by 50%. You get the idea. For laptops, a real benefit is they are highly resistant to shock. That is, if you laptop bumps/falls/moves with an HDD, eventually you'll have a problem. No such issue with SSD. I've put them in both our MBPs -- very glad I did.

Not the most astute MBP owner, but I'm considering upgrading to a SSD. I don't really pressure my current system, and all appears to work well to this point (early 2011 build).

In any event, why is a 128 GB SSD "better" than a 750 GB SATA?

Thanks for your thoughts!

I did the 128gb SSD for a month or so, then ditched it for a fast 750gb 7200 RPM drive.

It's faster than my old 500gb 7200rpm drive and... much much more space than the puny 128gb. I still don't trust SSD's. Once they die, they DIE. At least with hard disk drives, you can play with a dying drive and get the info off it.

Also at a certain point, who cares how fast your machine boots or a program loads?

My Word processing programs are the same "speed" as they were in the year 2001 on my 1st Generation Titanium Powerbook.

I did the 128gb SSD for a month or so, then ditched it for a fast 750gb 7200 RPM drive.

It's faster than my old 500gb 7200rpm drive and... much much more space than the puny 128gb. I still don't trust SSD's. Once they die, they DIE. At least with hard disk drives, you can play with a dying drive and get the info off it.

Also at a certain point, who cares how fast your machine boots or a program loads?

My Word processing programs are the same "speed" as they were in the year 2001 on my 1st Generation Titanium Powerbook.

After losing a ton of stuff on one those infamous IBM Deathstar drives, I backup habitually to multiple drives.

I can't recommend SSDs as a boot drive enough and I've got no idea where that slowdown after 128Gb BS is based on.

They boot quickly, they have ultra fast access time, don't need defragmenting EVER and in the case of Sandforce based drives, don't even need TRIM because they handle it internally.

I can't think of a better setup than an SSD as the boot drive and the original drive as extra storage for iTunes etc... apart from maybe using a 7200rpm HDD alongside the SSD for the best of both worlds. I use multi-track audio so as a tie over, I'm currently still booting from the internal 5400rpm drive till I can get a firewire case for my 7200rpm drive. They're cheap now so if I was starting from scratch, didn't already have one and was using a laptop, not a Mac Mini, I'd just buy a fast SSD like a Vertex 3 to boot from, a fast 2.5" 7200rpm drive like the Western Digital Scorpio Black and an optibay or equivalent to mount the SSD in.

I use the optical drive from my Mac Mini externally with a £6 USB to optical cable and it's fine like that.

SSD will not always solve the performance issues, from my experience the major bottleneck of the performance of a MBP is the integrity of the caches and permissions within the OSX system.

I once changed the HDD to SSD in my MBP, but last week when I put the HDD back into my MBP and did a clean install (real clean install, I reinstalled every app again not from Time Machine backup) of OSX, also repaired permissions and fixed some Spotlight issues, then the fresh installed OSX on HDD is blistering fast, just as fast as it was on SSD.

BTW don't use MacKeeper to maintain the OSX system, it will not make OSX go any faster. What I would suggest is keep using the stock HDD, and maintain the system carefully to avoid permission issues.

A lot to consider from several points of view. Right now I'm of a mind to keep what I have until such time as I need to make some sort of change. If I had to make a decision right now, I'd go the SSD route.

I find it easier to use an SSD for the OS and a regular HDD for everything else. My whole OS install only comes in at about 35Gb and all the files for iPhoto, iTunes and any large media files are all running off the HDD. I'd suggest not a Hybrid like the Momentus XT or rolling your own Fusion drive but an SSD and a HDD by utilising the DVD bay with an adapter and putting the OS files on the SSD and your user data on the HDD.

Quote:

Originally Posted by monokakata

So much for that famous British sense of humor.

Copying files to a 128 gb drive slows dramatically after 128 gb. In fact the transfer rate slows to zero. But with the 750 gb drive that's not the case. Except of course at 750 gb.

Right? Right.

and

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnasher729

The thread starter asked about 128 GB SSD and 750 GB SATA. How long do you think does it take to copy the 129th Gigabyte onto the SSD drive?

I shall now refrain from posting so early without the appropriate amount of coffee

I meant that if you boot from an SSD, once it goes over the 128, It won't slow down if it's part of a Fusion drive because it copies the least frequently used files to the HDD and uses the SSD as a giant cache for the OS and files you do use frequently so speed won't be affected.

I also for some reason assumed they meant if you got a larger than 128Gb SSD, it would slow down once it gets past the first 128Gb but as I've said, not enough coffee and didn't really explain where I was coming from with that